Culture

Cinco de Mayo, Primero de Mayo, and the Birth of the United States of América

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Crossposted from Colorlines.com
by Roberto Lovato
Back in the late 70’s and 80’s, when most white people didn’t feel safe in predominantly Latino neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Mission district (or inner cities, for that matter), summer started with Cinco de Mayo. Tiny, hyper-local street fairs where Mexican restaurants, crowds of happy, loud brown people and lamb chop-sideburned Santana-wannabe garage bands filled the air with cultural and political electricity. It went largely unnoticed outside of the Latino neighborhood, what used to be called El Barrio. Cinco de Mayo’s mix – live salsa, mariachi and rock Latino music; sometimes-inspired English and Spanish-language political speeches and volanteando (flyering) – provided the soft cultural cushion for generations of citizens and non-citizens dropped by the American Dream. And none but the cigarette smoking Marxista even knew or spoke about May Day, the International Workers Day rallies that filled cities around the country this past weekend.

Culture

The Dance of Time

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The dance of time: quick time, slow time; quick, quick, slow. I’m fascinated by the times of history. Evil usually takes time to prepare and to grow, but then often only instants, minutes to inflict, and then again a lifetime or more to heal. This seems to be part of the tragic of human nature and human existence. A massacre, rape, violence, horror in all its many forms…

Empathy

The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden: A Spiritual Response

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The struggle against terrorism will not be won through killing, no matter how many people we assassinate. You don’t fight malaria by seeking to kill every mosquito on the planet, but rather by draining the swamps. Similarly, you can’t eliminate terrorism by seeking to kill every terrorist (and in the process killing a lot of innocent others as well), but only by draining the swamps of hatred that have been built up as a response to the suffering generated by global inequities and injustices.

art

Secret Weapon Against Fascism: Ourselves

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Happy International Workers Day, everyone! All over the world, on grand and small scales, people are celebrating the majority in every society: workers and would-be workers. Every day, in my work as a teacher, I see that the belief in fairness continues to flourish among the majority, the baristas and servers, the nurse’s aides and clerks, the dishwashers and groundskeepers. It’s a complex situation, of course. Workers can be hard on one another, proud of their endurance under extreme conditions.

Culture

Films Show Holocaust Haunting Us Still

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Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, falls this year on the evening of May 1, until nightfall, May 2nd. (There are slight overlaps in this post with the online essay I wrote for Tikkun’s 25th anniversary and what I’ve posted earlier today at the Meretz USA Blog.)
Last year, within the space of a few days, I saw two very different films related to the Holocaust: A Film Unfinished is a documentary about a Nazi faux-documentary; the other is the 2009 Quentin Tarantino sensation, Inglourious Basterds, which I saw on the Showtime cable network. The former makes the Nazi cameramen into honest documentarians despite their intentions; the latter fictionalizes World War II in an outlandish way, to make Jewish characters into uber-avengers who shorten the war by wiping out most of the Nazi leadership, trapped in a burning cinema. If Inglourious Basterds were simply a spoof, it would be in exceptionally poor taste and not worth commenting upon. Instead, it is surprisingly serious and even riveting.

Media Tools

Thanks to Reach & Teach and Design Action!

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If you have been admiring our new magazine website since it debuted in March, and wondered who put it all together, well here are most of us at an evening celebrating the achievement. The two Tikkun staff who saw the project through from soup to nuts are Alana Yu-lan Price, second from left at bottom, and me, the baldy with specs at back. Our designer, with whom we worked from the get go, is Sabiha Basrai of Design Action, to the right of Alana. Sabiha has also designed the print magazine for the last four years, and the three of us have had a great time working together. The style and functionality (in design terms) of the new website owe more to these two women than to anyone else.

Culture

Disagreeing as a Necessary Step for Peacemaking

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by Leonard Felder
In the visionary teachings of Isaiah, it says the repair of the world will require that the wolf will dwell with the lamb, while the leopard will lie down with the goat. Woody Allen once joked, “The wolf can lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.” But seriously, overcoming the tension between a wolf and a lamb, or between a leopard and a goat, is a clue to the kind of peacemaking that needs to happen between humans who hold clashing points of view. In order to heal this broken world, we need to open up our hearts and minds to envision the possibility of hawks and doves, right and left, fundamentalists and progressives, moderate Democrats and radical Greens, sharing ideas and building teamwork where there once was snarky-ness. How is this possible, especially in our polarized current world?

Culture

Ten Real-World Commandments for Americans by Jim Burklo

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I’m a big fan of Jim Burklo’s “Musings,” often posting them here at Tikkun Daily with his permission. This one reminded me of the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment (ESRA) to the Constitution that Tikkun/NSP has been promoting and which once again got introduced in Congress. Check out Jim Burklo’s more individual/personal set of commandments. 1) Thou shalt not separate social from personal responsibility: thou art thine own keeper, and the keeper of thy brothers and sisters, too. 2) Thou shalt provide all children with basic survival needs for health, food, shelter, and safety even if it means bending the rules.

Empathy

What Makes Collaboration Work?

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Why is collaboration so difficult and tenuous for so many people? Since we are so clearly social animals, wouldn’t we naturally know how to collaborate? In the last several weeks I have been deeply immersed in learning and teaching about collaboration. I participated in planning and leading the Making Collaboration Real conference, and noticed the immense hunger people had for more tips about how to do collaboration. I attended the Social Venture Network gathering, where I led a breakout session about collaboration, I led one other workshop on collaboration at the Hub SoMa, and I have worked with people struggling to collaborate effectively.

art

The Art of Revolution: Spoken Word, Video, and Performance Art to Change the World

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Some of today’s most interesting, socially engaged, controversial, and occasionally even blasphemous artists are working in the mediums of spoken word, video and performance art. I’m excited to be joining Tikkun Daily as a blogger on the multi-media arts beat. All of the artists I plan to present here are working out of the belief that through their work they have the capacity — even the obligation — to ask the questions that light the spark of change. Whether they are examining issues of social justice, feminism/gender politics, the environment versus consumerism, Israel/Palestine or any other of today’s most complex problems, these artists are trailblazing their way to the cutting edge of both politics and artistic representation. The first artist featured here is Lisa Vinebaum of Montréal, Québec.